http://www.sfgate.com/sports/article/Torture-is-back-as-Giants-shift-into-postseason-5800004.php
WASHINGTON ? It all felt oh so familiar. Tight, tense torture, finishing with the Giants shaking hands in front of a hostile crowd.
The Giants have now won nine consecutive playoff games. They haven?t lost a playoff game since Adam Wainwright beat Tim Lincecum in Game 4 in St. Louis on Oct. 18, 2012. They?ve never lost a playoff series under Bruce Bochy.
?Hey, it?s only game one,? Buster Posey said.
That?s true. But it was a very big Game 1. The Giants beat the Nationals 3-2 and stole home-field advantage away from the best team in the National League in the process.
If the Nationals thought the Giants were going to be the pushovers they were in the regular season, when Washington took five of seven game and helped drop the Giants into their mid-season spiral, they must have slept through those 2010 and 2012 highlight reels.
Because in the postseason, the Giants are a different team. They are a team that doesn?t get rattled.
?We don?t give fear a face,? Sergio Romo said. ?We trust ourselves.?
?And with all due respect, we?re coming for you.?
The Giants came for Nationals ace Stephen Strasburg with everything they had, getting good at bats from the start of the game and making solid contact. Strasburg had to deal with traffic on the bases throughout the game. The Giants eked out single runs in the third and fourth innings, and when Bruce Bochy is managing in October, that?s often plenty.
Bochy, the best postseason manager going in the game, has the touch. Whatever will unfold in this series, the least probable scenario is rookie manager Matt Williams outmaneuvering Bochy.
?He is an amazing manager,? said Jake Peavy, whose first playoff experience came under Bochy with the Padres. ?In the postseason you get to see the way he maneuvers his roster. The way he puts, seemingly time and time again, people in the right spot to succeed. That gives us a lot of confidence.?
Bochy did it again. He turned to rookie pitcher Hunter Strickland for the game?s biggest moment, a bases-loaded two-out situation in the sixth. And Strickland struck out Ian Desmond with a 100-mph fastball.
It might look like past Octobers, but it isn?t quite the same.
Bochy doesn?t have the same options that he?s had in past years: his bench and bullpen aren?t as deep. There were two instances in the game when Bochy couldn?t do what he might have wanted.
In the sixth inning, he might have preferred to pinch hit for Travis Ishikawa, who hasn?t hit left-handers well, against Jerry Blevins. But the Giants bench is short and he didn?t want to use Matt Duffy that early in the game. In the eighth, Bochy might have wanted to go to a left-hander against Bryce Harper ? who had already hit a monster home run against Strickland. But he?d already burned the left-handers in his bullpen, Jeremy Affeldt and Javier Lopez.
So he stayed with Romo, who got Harper to ground into a force out.
?It helps us that we?ve been here before,? Romo said. ?We understand that it takes a little more than talent.?
The Nationals came into the series brimming with confidence. They were ready to erase the bitter taste from the 2012 playoffs, when they shelved Strasburg at the end of the season and then coughed up a five-game series to the Cardinals.
But for five days the Nationals sat on their hands, waiting for a game. They had to play a simulated game and drummed up a phony controversy by misinterpreting something Tim Hudson said to get a good lather going.
During that time, the Giants had flown to Pittsburgh, played a game, sprayed Champagne and traveled to Washington. They arrived in the nation?s capital already in postseason mode, with their ?championship blood? flowing again.
And though there was much pre-series discussion about the fact that Madison Bumgarner couldn?t pitch Game 1, the Giants were fully confident in Peavy. He has been nails for them down the stretch, and was again on Friday.
Peavy, veins throbbing, mouth running, took a no-hitter into the fifth. He took a shutout into the sixth. He was everything the Giants could have wanted.
?Gutty effort,? Bochy said. ?A lot of good, long innings. He saved us.?
He kept Nationals Park hushed much of the afternoon ? except when the bigheaded dead presidents danced and raced.
?You can?t take a batter off,? Peavy said. ?We understand that we may not be the favorites, but we play every pitch, on every side of the ball.?
Getting a split on the road in a five-game series is huge. It steals home-field advantage and puts all the pressure on the higher-seeded team. This is the first time the Giants have opened a divisional series on the road since 2002, when they beat the Braves.
But, for many observers, this series reminds them more of the Phillies series in 2010 than past divisional series. Maybe it?s all the red, or the sight of Jayson Werth?s beard. Or that the Giants are overwhelming underdogs against a team with a great pitching staff.
While the Giants have never lost a postseason series under Bochy, who knows what will happen in this one. Still, the Giants are back in their comfort zone.
GL
